Celtics Insider

Oak Hill coach: Rondo and J-Smith were both "very coachable"

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Steve Smith, who has had incredible success turning the biggest AAU talent into team players - Carmelo Anthony, anyone? - never had a problem juggling the big personalities of Rajon Rondo and Atlanta's Josh Smith on his 2003-04 Oak Hill Academy team.

As Smith noted in a story in today's Herald about the friendship between Rondo and Smith (http://tinyurl.com/7a3q7nq), this talented pair were clearly two of a kind. Both players have also been known to test the patience of their subsequent coaches, though Smith says he never had a problem.

"With me they were very coachable," he said. "I've heard people say that it was tough coaching both of them. But when you come from high school to Oak Hill, I'm going to get respect just because I was the coach of Oak Hill.

"Rajon and I had a great relationship," said Smith. "One thing was that you had to get Josh touches, and no one was going to do that better than Rajon. But neither of them was hung up on making the McDonald's (All-America) team, either, although I guess Rajon surprised some people that he made that game.

"At the high school level those two guys made us unbeatable," he said of the team's 38-0 record. "There were only one or two games that I can remember that were even close. You can see it on the highlight reels we have from that season. That was the greatest team we ever had. We had other good players on that team, too, but those were two incredible players to have on a high school team."